Organizations are met with increasing demands for being in strategic control. According to conventional
managerial wisdom, clearly defined tasks, uniform processes, thorough documentation and strategic
oversight are all perceived as part and parcel of making large and unwieldy organizations manageable,
transparent and efficient (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington, 2008; Kaplan & Norton, 2008). To live up to
these demands, numerous efforts have been undertaken, including the design and implementation of
management information systems. These systems, as epitomized in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
systems, seek to bring the organization under strategic control by creating a unified infrastructure for
collecting and analyzing data from virtually all fields of organizational operations to enable planning and
monitoring of activities (Kallinikos, 2006). Expectations of these systems at all levels of the organization are
high as they are expected to create organizational transparency and oversight for decision making
(Hanseth, Ciborra, & Braa, 2001). In this paper, we explore how ERP systems are used and impact local
practice in a specialized unit within The Danish Defense. Specifically, we ask what role SAP R/31 plays in
enabling and constraining everyday local practice and the handling of complexity and uncertainty at the
organizational front‐line. We draw on a case study conducted in a special operations force unit within the
Danish Defense, “The Frogman Corps”. The case illuminates the difficulties of using ERP systems for
management control in organizations experiencing complex operational conditions, including tension
between centralized control and uniformity on the one hand and unpredictability and need for decentralized
decision making on the other hand.